Myriad Editions

Myriad Editions was set up as a book packager in 1993 by Anne Benewick (1937–1998), Myriad's flagship atlas, The State of the World Atlas, was originally devised by Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal and is now authored by leading international peace researcher Dan Smith, OBE. It has sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide. Myriad Editions continues to publish award-winning atlases that map political, social and environmental concerns. Most of the atlases are distributed internationally, through publishers including Penguin and the University of California Press in the US, Earthscan in the UK, Éditions Autrement in France, Eva in Germany, Obeikan in Saudi Arabia, Publifolha in Brazil, Maruzen in Japan, Sigma in Taiwan and Pajera in Thailand. Myriad Editions also publishes special projects for the United Nations and other international organizations. These include a miniAtlas series on global development for the World Bank and a series of atlases on health issues for the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society (with authors including Judith Mackay). In 2005, Myriad Editions published The Brighton Book, a mixture of reportage, fiction, graphics and photographs; contributors included Jeanette Winterson and Nigella Lawson, alongside new writers. In 2009, the independent publishing company was awarded an Arts Council England grant to further develop their fiction publishing. With this funding, Myriad was able to publish two début novels by local authors in 2009, The Cloths of Heaven by Sue Eckstein and Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown. In Spring 2010, Myriad Editions launched a fiction list with three new novels: The Noise of Strangers by Robert Dickinson, The Clay Dreaming by comic artist Ed Hillyer and The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly. The company went on to publish several more new novels, including Quilt, by Nicholas Royle, Invisibles by Ed Siegle, 4 a.m. by Nina de la Mer, Elizabeth Haynes's Into the Darkest Corner, winner of Amazon's Book of the Year in 2011 and Amazon's Rising Star Award for debut novels, and Sue Eckstein's second book, Interpreters. The Myriad fiction list initially focused on first-time authors from the south-east of England but in 2013 the company increased and broadened its output, taking on titles from a more national and international perspective, as well as graphic novels. Among recent acquisitions are Belonging by Umi Sinha, Blackheath by Adam Baron, Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago by Douglas Cowie, and North Facing by Tony Peake. Benjamin Johncock's novel The Pilot, published by Myriad in 2016, won the Best First Novel Award from the Authors' Club. Other well-received titles include Billy, Me & You by Nicola Streeten, the first long-form graphic memoir by a British woman to have been published, which was Highly Commended in the Popular Medicine category of the British Medical Association Medical Book Awards 2012, and The Inking Woman: 250 Years of Women Cartoon and Comics Artists in Britain. In March 2019, Myriad Editions published New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, edited by Margaret Busby (a follow-up to her 1992 Daughters of Africa), and in a collaboration with SOAS University of London launched an award linked to the anthology, the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. Merger with New Internationalist In May 2017, a merger was announced between Myriad Editions and Oxford-based non-profit media co-operative New Internationalist (NI), whereby Myriad would continue to publish under its own imprint, with Candida Lacey and Corinne Pearlman remaining Publishing and Creative Directors respectively, while using the additional creative, sales and administrative resources of New Internationalist and having a presence in Oxford as well as in Brighton and London. Lacey stepped down as publisher of Myriad in September 2021. ==Competitions==

First Fictions In 2012, a biennial "boutique literary festival" called First Fictions was established by Myriad Editions in collaboration with the University of Sussex, with the aim of celebrating and championing first novels, both past and present. First Drafts and First Graphic Novel Competition As part of Myriad Editions' stated mission to support new writers and uncover new talent they organise two competitions for work in progress, in order to enable promising writers to benefit from constructive and professional feedback at an early stage in their careers. The First Drafts competition (formerly called the Writer's Retreat Competition) has since 2010 been open to all writers who have not yet published or self-published a book of fiction to submit a prose fiction work-in-progress, the prize being a week-long writing retreat at West Dean College, near Chichester, in addition to detailed editorial feedback and mentoring by a Myriad author. A special edition of the First Drafts competition in 2018 invited submissions from women writers of African heritage, with the opportunity to win a place in New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby. In November 2018, Rutendo Chabikwa and Anni Domingo were announced as the joint winners. The First Graphic Novel Competition, held every two years, offers winners "the opportunity to develop their work with Myriad's creative and editorial team, with a view to future publication". The prize was first awarded in 2012, with the winner being published by Myriad the following year. Myriad Comic Cuts In 2017, Myriad teamed up with comedy television company Roughcut Television to launch the Myriad Comic Cuts graphic novel competition to find comedy drama scripts in graphic novel form that can be developed into a comic drama series for television. ==Mission and current focus==

Myriad Editions states that its mission is "to make the personal political and the local international... to find new ways of seeing the world and our place within it. To this end, we are proud to publish extraordinary storytellers and their remarkable work—fiction or nonfiction, mapped, drawn or written, these are books for our times." As publishing director, Candida Lacey said: "Today it feels more important than ever to find new ways of seeing the world and our place within it. We're interested in the story an author is telling, not whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, mapped, drawn or written. We need new ways of understanding the past and its relevance to the present; new ways of highlighting inequality and injustice; new ways to make the world a better place." ==See also==